Homefront: The Revolution review

Homefront: The Revolution seemed destined to be dead on arrival. If it even arrived at all. After changing developers and game engine a couple of times, it’s fair to say it had a tumultuous development, and I suppose it’s a miracle it ever saw the light of day. Naturally, this rocky development journey led the internet hordes to write the game off as terrible before seeing the starting menu. It’s at this point I’d like to say Homefront is a cracking game, but sadly it’s not.

It’s more thematically linked to the original Homefront than being a direct sequel. Homefront was a generic, linear first-person shooter. Whereas Homefront: The Revolution has loftier ambitions, attempting to be a sort of urban Far Cry in a bombed-out version of Philadelphia. You will be capturing outposts, upgrading your guns and character attributes like your ammo capacity. The Far Cry influence is there for all to see.

The plot deals with North Korea taking over America through some sneaky use of technology. Walker, leader of the resistance, has been captured, so it’s up to you and your resistance buddies to find a way to get him back because apparently there’s no way the uprising could ever happen without him. This is ironic, considering you seem perfectly capable of inspiring the masses through your actions in the game.

However, it does serve to make you feel like you’re genuinely part of a resistance. You’re often poorly equipped with cobbled-together weaponry that looks delightfully DIY, often relying on hit-and-run tactics rather than a sustained gunfight – a certain way to get yourself killed. It makes you feel like you’re attempting to operate from underground, making a difference when you can instead of fighting a whole army on your lonesome.

On your journey of civilian liberation, you’ll find yourself knocking around two different area types for the most part – Red Zones and Yellow Zones. Red Zones are where the resistance is strongest, with gun caches and traps scattered about the place. Here the North Koreans have a shoot-on-sight policy, so if you’re spotted rummaging amongst the rubble, you can expect a squadron of soldiers on your position fairly sharpish. Yellow Zones are the more interesting of the two as this is where you can promote your uprising better.

This is because you can gain a great sense of satisfaction from inspiring the populace to rise up. Once you’ve filled the ‘hearts and mind’ bar to 100%, you’ll see a cutscene of civilians overthrowing their oppressors, and it does genuinely feel like you’ve made a small but vital difference. Getting this bar to 100% is a little tedious though, you’ll often find yourself sabotaging enemy equipment or switching on radios to the resistance broadcast, which quickly starts to feel like a grind once it becomes a mission objective for the umpteenth time.

Homefront’s version of Far Cry’s radio towers, which resemble intricately designed bombed-out buildings, are the more enjoyable part of these liberation quests. They essentially act as puzzles that have you navigate through various places to reach your goal. This will see you looking for blue paint that indicates the way to go before making your way up these buildings. It’s certainly a lot more enjoyable and varied than climbing up a vertical radio tower, that’s for sure.

But, while Homefront has done wonders in terms of atmosphere and setting, the gameplay and general performance do their best to undo all of this good work and largely succeed. The framerate on the PS4 is pretty poor, with outdoor areas dipping low enough that playing the game feels like a real chore. On top of this, every time the game autosaves, it will freeze for a few seconds like it’s trying to comprehend how a fire could start at a Sea Parks. It makes the game hard to play for more than a few hours at a time simply because it can just become too frustrating.

It’s not just optimisation issues either. The AI in the game sometimes behaves in a variety of bizarre and reasonably hilarious ways. Sometimes they will start running around in circles because their pathfinding has been interrupted or leap into a fire and be too stubborn to admit they’re burning alive. There’s a mission where one of your fellow resistance members stands in the middle of a gunfight, looking slightly perturbed that people keep shooting at him, despite his obvious imperviousness to bullets. It’s the kind of thing that you encounter in most games from time to time, but the frequency here is alarming, and it certainly kills the atmosphere they were going for.

But it doesn’t stop there. In the Red Zones, there are motorbikes scattered about the place. Their intended use is for you to zip around the map completing outposts, but the problem is they’re awful and often get stuck on invisible terrain, making them harder to drive than they already are. The video game staple of running people down is completely ruined by it. Yes, you can kill a man by running them over with your bike, but you’ll clip through their body and only hear their sounds of anguish before feeling the need to turn around to check you did get them. I found running more effective in the end.

The gunplay is also lacklustre, which is a shame given how much thought went into the weapons. Each weapon can be modified, with scopes and grips that you can switch on the fly. Furthermore, they all have the option of being converted into a different weapon. For example, the pistol can become a sub-machine gun, and the pump-action shotgun can become automatic. You can do this whenever you choose, and it helps support the mentality of ‘make the most of what you have’ a resistance is likely to have.

But for the most part, the guns have no kick. The aiming feels loose, and you’ll find yourself sighing as your assault rifle’s bullets sail past an enemy the reticule is clearly on. Now you could say this might be deliberate to force you to choose your moments more carefully and whatnot, but to be honest, if you say your game is a first-person shooter, the shooting needs to be better than this.

It might surprise some people to discover that Homefront: The Revolution ever got released at all, and with the current state of the PS4 version, I can’t understand why it was. It has some good ideas and is even enjoyable at times, but the myriad of performance issues and frequently questionable gameplay make me wonder why the game was released now. I guess the developers were fed up with it. I know I am.

4/10

Doom (2016) review

Occasionally, going back to basics in a video game can make a slightly tired genre feel reinvigorated. Take shooters, for example. You would trip over and break every bone in your body if you tried to wade through the plethora of military shooters that have come out in the last ten years. They all come equipped with a regenerative health system that promotes ducking into cover whenever you’re in severe danger and waiting until that red screen of death has faded away. It can get a bit overly familiar at times. So thankfully, id Software has brought Doom back from its 10-year hiatus to give us a dose of the old stuff.

Straight from the off, after you’ve been resurrected and have broken free of the chains binding you to your former resting place, you’ll immediately pick up a gun and start gunning down demons. There’s no time for exposition and story here. You’re playing as a guy who’s incredibly angry and merely wants to kill anything that promises to spew copious amounts of blood.

Aggression and bloodlust are the central themes of Doom. From the excellent heavy metal soundtrack to the bloodthirsty Glory Kills. Everything aims to provide the player with a sense of fast-paced fury. The Glory Kills are central to this idea. They essentially act as a finishing move and can be performed once a demon or Possessed has been damaged enough to cause them to start flashing.

Move in close enough, hit the melee button, and you’ll be rewarded with many grotesque instant kills. Depending on the enemy type and where you’re looking when you press the button, this can range from ripping their jaw off their face to tearing off their arm and beating them to a bloody pulp with it.

Whilst being a sadistic visual treat, this system also promotes forward momentum. You see, performing a Glory Kill provides you with health. That’s right, no regenerating health here, folks. So, to stay alive, you find yourself getting into the rhythm of laying waste to your enemies with your guns before finishing them off with a Glory Kill to top your health back up. This, combined with your movement speed of approximately 100mph and the ability to eventually double jump, makes the combat fast, frantic and most importantly, incredibly fun.

Moving super-fast and being able to leap a fair distance also necessitates large arenas to fight in. Doom has these in spades and adds verticality to these spaces to add more intrigue to your skirmishes. Jump pads, teleporters and multiple levels mean that you have plenty of room to circle strafe around your victims and a brief escape route if you need it. You might need a breather too, your health does drop fairly quickly, even on the lower difficulty settings, so you will need to make use of the Glory Kills, or you’ll be dead pretty sharpish.

So we’ve established the combat is fast-paced and that ripping the skull of a demon in half is endlessly amusing, but are the weapons themselves up to scratch? For the most part, yes. Most of the guns have an excellent weight to them, giving each shot the punch that you’d expect. Both shotguns in the game fire with a pleasingly deep boom that adds to their heft, and the accompanying explosion of an on-target Rocket Launcher shot is innately satisfying.

There is a choice of two mods to equip to each gun, except the Super Shotgun, which gives them additional abilities. For example, the Assault Rifle can also fire several mini-missiles that burrow into the enemy’s flesh before exploding. Loading a number of these into one enemy and watching multiple explosions finish them off is sadistically delightful.

This isn’t always the case, though. The plasma rifle feels like the gun is a bubble machine on steroids. I don’t know what you would expect from plasma, but it has almost no feeling of impact, and it’s a bit disappointing compared to the rest of the games arsenal. Somewhat less surprising is that the starting pistol may as well be firing compliments with the pathetic damage it does. But I suppose it has infinite ammo and is only really there for a dire emergency when you run out of ammo anyway.

Fortunately, running out of ammo isn’t an issue thanks to the chainsaw, which can instantly kill most enemies. This will use up fuel, with bigger enemies logically using more gas so you can’t just massacre an entire room. Once you have neatly sawn the enemy in two, you’ll receive a shower of ammo. It’s a smart way to integrate the chainsaw into the modern Doom, giving it a higher feeling of importance rather than simply being a gorier melee alternative to your fists.

When you’re not mowing your way through the citizens of Hell or the former inhabitants of the UAC facility, you will be hunting for secrets and upgrading your character. The two kind of go hand in hand, you’ll earn points to upgrade your weapon simply by killing enough enemies, but if you take the time to look in every crawlspace, you’ll find yourself with a fully kitted out marine a lot faster. You can also upgrade your character’s health, armour and ammo capacity, alongside a few other traits such as being resistant to exploding barrel damage. None of which is particularly exciting in truth. But, it gives you a reason to explore and makes murder a bit easier, which is never a bad thing.

Your exploration is split between the facility on Mars and Hell itself. Both of these locations look pretty good, so long as you don’t mind many browns, oranges and a constant feeling of Deja vu. There is little colour or variety in the Doom world, but then I guess that makes sense given the setting. How many different ways can you do a science facility or rocky land of Satan? Still, the weapons all look pretty awesome, and your mods alter the appearance, such as the missile pod popping out from the side of your Assault Rifle every time you wish to use it, which is always great to see.

Looking good on the current batch of consoles often comes at a price these days, and there is the odd framerate drop now and then, but nothing that noticeably hinders the experience. However, if you are bothered by a lack of frames, I’d recommend looking into the PC version of the game, which is where I’d imagine most hardened Doom fans will be anyway.

A more pressing downside to the game is the bosses. While often large and intimidating, they’re kind of tiresome to battle. Soaking up infinitely more bullets than even the tankiest of regular enemies makes fighting them a bit of a slog. There’s been a notable attempt to vary the bosses from just being giant demonic sponges, but this doesn’t truly succeed. In the case of one boss who spends most of the fight with an impenetrable shield up, it only serves to make them more tedious.

Whether or not you’ll enjoy Doom hinges on how much you like the idea of endlessly murdering things. There are five difficulty settings to work your way through to become King of Doom, so there is some replay value here, particularly if you enjoy the combat. But Doom is ultimately a one-trick pony. It just does this one trick better than all of its rivals. The fast-paced combat has brought classic shooters back into the modern-day, and if you choose to settle down with Doom, you’ll most likely realise how much you missed them.

8/10

Ratchet & Clank review

Ratchet & Clank is likely to hold a nostalgic place in the hearts of anyone who owned a Playstation 2 back in the early 2000s. Its offbeat sense of humour, imaginative array of fantastic weapons and interesting gadgets cemented its place as a classic PlayStation series that arguably lost its way a little in the PS3 era. So, for its debut on the PS4, Ratchet & Clank heads back to its roots for a re-imagining of the first game.

That’s right, for a change of pace, this isn’t just an HD remake of the first game because they’ve already done that. Instead, this is a game based on the upcoming movie which takes inspiration from the original game. That somewhat confusing statement (that the game itself makes in the first few minutes) means that this is essentially a reboot. So while you’ll find yourself recognising locations and having a rough idea of where the plot’s going, until it ends in a completely different way to what you remember, it won’t entirely be a jaunt down memory lane.

That’s not to say you’ll be free of nostalgia once you jump back into the Solana galaxy. Being back on the beautiful water resort of Pokitaru or witnessing hover cars float through Metropolis (now called Aleero City) is sure to invoke fond memories of the original, except this time, these places actually look how your mind remembers them. Back in 2002 Ratchet & Clank was a great looking game for its time, but this re-imagining shows how far graphics have progressed in 14 years.

Whether it’s the volcanic planet Gaspar or Rilgar, a gloomy-looking planet with perpetual rainfall, the game looks incredible and is arguably the best-looking title on the PS4. For the most part, each new place feels distinctive thanks to a highly varied coloured palette keeping the visual treats interesting. There is a deliberate attempt to make each locale memorable and is most noticeable with the planet Batalia. Previously a fairly forgettable place, Batalia is now a cold, icy world where dogfights in the ongoing battle between Drek Industries and the Galactic Rangers take place above as you make your way through the level.

Who are these two groups? Well, the Galactic Rangers are an elite team of heroes who protect the galaxy. Whereas Drek Industries are an evil terraforming corporation that happily destroys or drains resources of other planets to build their own. The boss of this organisation is Chairmen Drek, a short alien known as a Blarg, whose head resembles a butternut squash. Drek is a great villain, and it’s good to see him back. The way he remains business-like while threatening to kill anyone who fails him, with all the nuance of a motivational speaker, is brilliant.

At the helm of the Galactic Rangers is the wonderfully obnoxious Captain Qwark. Long-time fans will be well aware of Qwark with his selfish nature and general idiocy. Despite evidence to the contrary, he’s a great character and is frequently the source of the funnier moments in the game. In this re-imagining, he starts the game in prison and then proceeds to narrate the events to a fellow inmate who wants to know how Qwark ended up in the slammer.

Having Qwark narrate the game is an excellent choice by Insomniac. His overly dramatic voice and disdain for Ratchet and Clank (who he hates for being more loved by the galaxy than he is) makes for some hilarious narration as the story unfolds. It pretty much plays out roughly how you’ll remember the first game up to a point. Dr Nefarious, a long-serving villain, wasn’t in the original game, but he appears here as Drek’s head scientist. This leads to further shenanigans that actually change the story you once knew quite considerably.

I can only assume Nefarious’ inclusion was down to Insomniac assuming that people don’t remember Drek all that well and wanted to provide them with a character that they would know, even if it’s not quite how you remember him. It doesn’t really hurt the story and, in fact, I like the changes the inclusion of Nefarious brings. However, the story is hampered a little by being a movie tie-in.

The game’s cutscenes are taken straight from the film, and whilst this means they look incredible, it also makes the story feel a tad disjointed. Moments after Ratchet and Clank have first met, the next cutscene shows them getting on like they’ve known each other for years. I can only assume that their development is covered in the film because it’s not shown here. Other than that, the story is an amusing jaunt, complete with the series’ signature humour providing a few chuckles along the way.

The story has never been the main draw of Ratchet & Clank though, the gameplay has. Somewhat obviously, I guess, this being a game and all. Anyway, it is fantastic. Wiping out an entire room of enemies and being rewarded by watching bolts (the game’s currency) bounce into Ratchet with an addictive tinkling sound is endlessly satisfying. The amount of methods of enemy removal at your disposal is also impressive.

The Ratchet & Clank series has a long history of creative weapons. So, instead of only including weapons from the first game verbatim, Insomniac have opted for a greatest hits of sorts. Weapons from each game are present with one new addition, the Pixelizer, which is essentially a shotgun with the bonus of turning the enemy into a pixelated version of itself. It packs a nice punch.

However, it doesn’t take anything away from the weapons in the game. The Groovinator is a disco ball grenade that makes every enemy in the game, including bosses dance like they just don’t care, giving you ample opportunity to kill them with something else. It’s a joy to see the wonderful amount of imagination put into each enemies dance – you’ve not truly lived until you see a tank bust out some sweet moves.

Every weapon in the game is also upgradeable, which can be achieved in two ways. Simply using the weapon to cause a ruckus will upgrade it, giving it more damage, and when you hit level 5, your gun will change quite noticeably. Mr Zurkon, a floating robot who loves killing folk, follows you around and fires at stuff automatically. It’s great for just having extra damage you don’t need to worry about dealing with. His limited lines will grate on you after the fifteenth time of hearing them, though. Anyway upon reaching level 5, he will gain an accomplice known as Zurkon Jr, doubling the damage output. More damage is usually what upgrades will result in, but the visual spectacle is also improved, making things on screen look crazier.

The Bouncer, a cluster grenade that bounces towards enemies like they’re magnets, will get to a point where firing one grenade will result in dozens of miniature explosions that can clear rooms in next to no time. It’s awesome to see, and the game’s performance doesn’t dip either, so you can gleefully unleash littles bombs of doom without worrying about the game chugging. The only downside is that the Bouncer is a pre-order bonus. Whilst I’ll probably talk about pre-order bonuses another time, I think in a game so strongly focused around its arsenal, it’s a bit of a dick move.

The second way to upgrade weapons is through raritanium. A material that can be collected by smashing crystals or just by killing enemies, you’ll get a fair bit of it without any real effort, so it doesn’t ever feel like a grind. You can then trade these crystals at a vendor to fill in an upgrade tree for each weapon. Taking the form of a hex-based grid this provides additional bonuses such as more bolts per kill or higher ammo capacity, none of which is particularly exciting, I admit. But it does make you feel like you’re always working towards something..

Additionally, each of these hex-based grids has many hexagons with question marks, and acquiring the space around these will unlock an additional upgrade that will add a new effect to your gun. This makes obtaining enough raritanium to unlock these upgrades a bit more exciting because you’ll wonder what new mod you’ll get for your weapons each time. This, coupled with the variety of your arsenal, alleviates some of the repetition that can come from endlessly killing folk.

The game also helps with this by making sure you’re not endlessly slaying enemies or at least changes the way you’re doing it. Though you spend most of the game controlling Ratchet, you’ll also have the opportunity to be his robot compadre Clank. These sections are less frantic and more puzzle focused. You’ll quickly acquire the ability to change little robots into three different forms – a bridge, a spring for reaching higher areas and one that is essentially a battery. These puzzles are pretty simple and usually involve getting all of these robots into one place so you can power up an objective. They are pretty satisfying to complete once, but on further playthroughs, they can become very tedious.

But at least they’re enjoyable the first time around, unlike the ship combat. The whole game feels well-polished apart from these sections. For something fairly small that can jet around without worrying about pedestrian things like gravity, Ratchet’s ship feels overly heavy to control. It looks like it should be fast and manoeuvrable, but it feels like trying to turn around a lorry. If you fly too close to a building while flying, you will sometimes take damage even if you’re not physically touching it and will sometimes get stuck and be forced to watch your health drop to zero as the ship shakes around like mad.

There are also Hoverboard races, which are mostly optional unless you want all the weapons, but they provide a nice break from all the shooting and have a good feeling of speed if you manage to hit all of the boost ramps. Similarly, there are also several grindrails dotted about the planets. These see Ratchet looping around the levels on a thin rail, and it feels like being on a rollercoaster. These sections are usually pretty straightforward and task you with jumping from one rail to another or knocking away mines, so it’s not too difficult. Regardless, these segments provide a great opportunity to admire the level as you hit heights that won’t achieve on planets that don’t allow you to use the jetpack.

Speaking of which, the jetpack is great. It adds verticality to the combat, allowing for aerial battles that are much more engaging than those you’ll have aboard the ship. They open the level up and give you a sense of freedom, even if this is only an illusion. There are also a few boss battles that allow you to use the jetpack and they are all really enjoyable. They allow the arenas where you fight the bosses to be much larger, giving the battles a grander sense of scale.

Once you’ve completed the game, you’ll be able to access challenge mode, which is basically new game plus. This will allow you to purchase the omega version of weapons so that you can level them up to 10, adding a bit of replay value to the game. You’ll only be able to do this if you’ve collected the three cards for a particular weapon, however. This isn’t as hard or boring as it sounds since you’ll gain cards by killing enemies and can trade in five duplicates for a card you don’t have yet. So you will get them all eventually.

The only cards you’ll have to hunt for are the RYNO cards. The RYNO is an overpowered weapon that makes an appearance in every Ratchet & Clank game, though how it works is often different. The cards are easy enough to find, and you’ll get two of them by beating both hoverboard races on gold, and it is well worth it. The RYNO is ludicrously overpowered and will drop a boss in no time at all. It is so much fun, even if it does take any challenge away from the game.

Considering the game doesn’t cost as much as a full release, I picked up my copy for £25 on launch, Ratchet & Clank is incredibly easy to recommend. It looks great, has stellar combat, and though sometimes unsuccessful, it makes an admirable attempt to mix things up so you‘re not just fighting enemies all of the time. It’s a wonderful introduction for newcomers to the franchise and long-term fans alike.

8/10